Teaching Resource

This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical and literary significance. Through this step-by-step process, students will acquire the skills to analyze any primary or secondary source material.

Over the course of three lessons the students will compare and contrast two different versions of one of the most iconic events in American history: the...

Teaching Resource

January 1, 2013, marked the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. This revolutionary document ushered in the Thirteenth Amendment and the end of slavery in the United States. These two great legal documents were the culmination of a long struggle that began in the colonial period with the arrival of the first African slaves in North America. The Great Emancipation of the 1860s cannot be understood without studying what is often called the “first emancipation”—the growing belief among many...

Teaching Resource

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, 1776

Background

The concept of “Liberty” is one that many hold dear. However, what liberty means to each individual may vary depending on his or her situation. During the American...

Teaching Resource

For fire and water are not more heterogeneous than the different colonies in North America. Nothing can exceed the jealousy and emulation which they possess in regard to each other. . . . In short . . . were they left to themselves there would soon be a civil war from one end of the continent to the other, while the Indians and Negroes would . . . impatiently watch the opportunity of exterminating them all together.

—Rev. Andrew Burnaby, 1760

Reading...

Teaching Resource

The previous list of Essential Questionscan be downloaded as a pdf here.

A carefully crafted lesson has a well-defined focus and framework as well as a clearly stated purpose. The lesson should present students with an issue that is phrased as a problem to be solved or a thought-provoking question to be...

Teaching Resource

The best teachers of Western Civilization courses have long made use of the European fine arts—painting, sculpture, architecture, the decorative arts—to bring the subject alive to their students. It is perhaps less well recognized that there are many wonderful works of art that can illustrate American history as well. The most rewarding paintings and prints not only make historical events visible but provide students with plenty to talk about. What does the picture tell us about people’s lives, customs, family relationships, and technology...

Teaching Resource

I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.

Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 31, 1776

Reading 2

As to...

Teaching Resource

Many students misconstrue the American Revolution as a period of unanimous support for independence from Great Britain. However, colonists generally considered themselves loyal British citizens, asserting rightful constitutional claims that had been previously established through their colonial charters or contracts. After the French and Indian War ended in 1763, many colonies saw their right of self-rule stripped away by Parliament as it exerted greater authority over its empire. In reaction to this attempt to...

Teaching Resource

Teaching Resource

There are certain subjects that rarely succeed at the box office. Until the mid-1970s, and the smashing success of Rocky, sports movies almost always flopped with the general public. In past years, westerns and swashbuckling adventure films have often been box office duds. But one genre has consistently failed. Hollywood has never made a film about the American Revolution that has lived up to expectations. Curiously, Hollywood has made more successful movies about the French and Indian War, including The Last of the Mohicans...